Trans Italy 1971-85

Trans Italy

1960-70

1971-85

1986-2000

In this period, trans activism expanded and after lobbying and street demonstrations, the 1982 Act of Parliament led to rights for post-op trans persons. 

Also in this period a good number of trans persons managed to get parts in Italian movies, both EuroTrash and art films:  Marcella Di Folco (screen name Marcello di Falco); Giorgia O’Brien, Dominot, Ajita Wilson, Eva Robin's and Giò Stajano Starace. 

1971

Giò Stajano Starace, Italy’s most famous queer, became director of Men, the fashion and gossip magazine.

FUORI. (Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano) founded in Turin. Fuori! is also Italian for Out! The full name was a clear reference to the French FHAR (Front homosexual d’action révolutionnaire). It was based on the work of gay groups in Milan, Padua, Rome and Turin that had previously met as “Associazione di Studi PsicoSociali”. Founding members included Mariasilvia Spolato, Mario Mieli, Angelo Pezzana and the French writer Françoise d’Eaubonne. Its approach was Marxist, placing the homosexual question in the context of the class conflict.

The Fronte di Liberazione Omosessuale (FLO) was also founded.

• Mario Monicelli (dir). La Mortadella starring Sophia Loren with Candy Darling in a small part. Italy/France 97 mins 1971. IMDB.
• Dino Risi (dir). In nome del popolo italiano, with Ugo Tognazzi, and Marcello di Falco as secretario de Santenocito and Giò Stajano as Floriano Roncherini (uncredited). Italy 103 mins 1971.

1972

Activist Mariasilvia Spolato became the first woman in Italy to come out in public as a lesbian, losing her teaching license as a result.

First queer public protest in Italy as activists from Fuori! and the French group FHAR demonstrated at the first International Congress of Sexology in San Remo close to the French border, where they protested against the psychiatric treatment of homosexuality as a disease and, especially, against the use of aversion therapy to "convert" homosexuals to heterosexuality.

Fuori! magazine was started and continued publication for 10 years. Circulation went as high as 8,000 copies.

Roberta Franciolini lived in Turin and founded a trans group there.

Trans woman, La Romanina, was finally allowed to change her legal gender and released from the semi-confinement of a village in the south.

Robertina Manganaro, still only 14, was already taking female hormones, and was even permitted, at her private school, to wear a skirt.

• Mino Guerrini (dir). Decameron n° 2 - Le altre novelle del Boccaccio, with Marcello di Falco as the Abbot. Italy 98 mins 1972.
• Flavio Mogherini (dir). Anche se volessi lavorare, che faccio? With Marcello di Falco as the museum keeper. Italy 99 mins 1972.
• Steno (dir). Il terrore con gli occhi storti, with Marcello di Falco as gangster. Italy/France 93 mins 1972.
• Gianfranco Parolini (dir). Sotto a chi tocca! with Marcello di Falco as the eunuch servant. Italy/Spain/ West Germany 93 mins 1972.
• Lucio Russo (dir). I racconti di Canterbury N. 2, with Marcello di Falco. Italy 95 mins 1972.

1973

• Jacques Demy (dir). L'Événement le plus important depuis que l'homme a marché sur la Lune/ Niente di grave, suo marito è incinto/ A Slightly Pregnant Man, with Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve. France/Italy 92 mins 1973. IMDB Wikipedia. A driving instructor becomes pregnant, and hormones in chickens are deemed to be the reason. He becomes a model for paternity clothing.
• Sergio Citti (dir). Storie scellerate, scr: Pier Paolo Pasolini & Sergio Citti, with Marcello di Falco. Italy/France 93 mins 1973. Two condemned prisoners tell each other bawdy tales.
• Federico Fellini (dir). Amarcord, with Marcello di Falco as Prince. Italy/France 123 mins 1973. IMDB. 

1974

First gay club in Italy opened in Florence.

Fuori! Allied with the Radical Party, thus becoming reformist rather than revolutionary. Mario Mieli and others left the group.

• Fernando di Leo (dir). Il poliziotto è marcio, with Marcello di Falco as the killer. Italy/France 94 mins 1974.
• Alberto Sodi (dir). Finché c'è guerra c'è Speranza, with Alberto Sodi. and Marcello di Falco as Jepson. Italy 116 mins 1974.

1975

Andy Warhol’s Ladies and Gentlemen (The Drag Queen Paintings) series, was based on an idea by Italian art dealer Luciano Anselmino, using polaroids of trans women recruited at New York’s Gilded Grape which were then silkscreened onto a canvas and painted over. They were first shown in September/October 1975 at the Palazzo di Diamente in Ferrara, region of Emilia Romagna. Online.

February 15: Lou Reed concert at the Pallazzo dello Sport in Rome. Reed was supported by his then spouse Rachel Humphreys who was good in a fight – which was useful when the concert turned into a riot.

• Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi (dir). Mondo candido, with Marcello di Falco as cavaliere. Italy 107 mins 1973.
• Sergio Corbucci (dir). Di che segno sei? with Albert Sodi, Paolo Villaggio as the pilot, and Marcello di Falco as Cosimo. Italy 130 mins 1975. Four episodes: in the first a pilot has decided to become a woman.
• Lucio Dandolo (dir). Quant'è bella la Bernarda, tutta nera, tutta calda, with Marcello di Falco as Arturo. Italy 92 mins 1975.

1976

The Radical Party included Fuori! Activists as list candidates for the 1976 elections – the first time in Italy that openly gay persons ran for public office.

Brigitte Bond was interviewed for a Spanish paper and revealed that she was married and living in Campania, Italy, and that her real name was Giovanna.

A biography of La Romanina was published.

Now post-op, New Yorker Ajita Wilson arrives in Italy, and starts a prolific film career. IMDB.

Mario Mieli with the theatre troupe, Collettivo Teatrale Nostra Signora dei Fiori, put on the play La traviata norma: vaffanculo, ebbene sì (The Corrupted Norm: Go away) in Milan, and then Florence and Rome.  A theatrical pastiche debunking anti-gay stereotypes through a satire of heterosexuality and an ironic deconstruction of straight masculinity.   Mieli's stage persona was Maria M. 

• R. Cecconi. Io, la ‘Romanina’. Perche´ sono diventata donna. Florence: Vallecchi, 1976.
• Vincente Minnelli (dir). A Matter of Time, with Liza Minnelle, Ingrid Bergman, Isabella Rossellini and Dominot. Italy/US 97 mins 1976. Aging and beauty in an old Rome hotel. Dominot is the hotel porter.
• Salvatore Samperi (dir). Sturmtruppen, with Dominot. Italy/France 110 mins 1976. A war satire.
• Cesare Canevari (dir). La Princessa Nuda, with Ajita Wilson as Princessa Mariam. Italy 94 mins 1976. IMDB. Loosely based on a prominent exile from Idi Amin’s Uganda – with added pornography.
• Alberto Sordi (dir). Il comune senso del pudor, with Giò Stajano as direttore studio fotografico (uncredited). Italy 123 mins 1976.
• Fernando di Leo (dir). Gli amici di Nick Hezard (Nick the Sting), with Lee J Cobb and Giò Stajano as Jeweller Steffen. Italy/Switzerland 97 mins 1976.
• Elio Petri (dir). Todo modo, with Marcello Mastroianni, and Marcello di Falco as Sacca. Italy 130 mins 1976.
• Mauro Severino (dir). Tutti possono arricchire tranne i poveri, with Marcello di Falco as friend of countess (uncredited). Italy 90 mins 1976.
• Mino Guerrini (dir). Vinella e Don Pezzotta, with Marcello di Falco as Tony. Italy 95 mins 1976.

1977

Eva Robin’s had become a model and a singer. In 1977, using the name Cassandra, she recorded the disco classic, Disco Panther.

Mario Mieli, himself a gay transvestite, published his theoretical classic, Elementi di critica omosessuale.  He argues that each person is as potentially the other gender as potentially bisexual, were they not conditioned, from childhood by a certain type of society which, through what Mieli called educastration, forces us to consider heterosexuality as "normality" and all the rest as perversion. Mieli uses the term transessualità, but does not mean what is meant today, that is one who seeks permanent changes via hormones and surgery, but rather for the innate polymorphic and "perverse" trending of all people. 

• Mario Mieli. Elementi di critica omosessuale. G Einaudi, 1977.   English translation by David Fernbach: Homosexuality and Liberation: Elements of a Gay Critique.  Gay Men's Press, 1980.  
• Guido Zurli (dir). Gola profondo nero (Black Deep Throat), With Ajita Wilson as Claudine. Italy 83 mins 1977. Claudine, a reporter, investigates an exclusive sex cult.
• Roberto Montero (dir). La sorprendente eredità del tontodimammà. With Ajita Wilson. Italy 88 mins 1977. A sex comedy about two young girls about to receive a huge inheritance on marriage.
• Amasi Damiani (dir). Amori morbosi di una contessina. With Ajita Wilson. Italy 89 mins 1977.
• Roberto Montero (dir). La bravata, with Ajita Wilson. Italy 87 mins 1977.
• Amasi Damiani (dir). D'improvviso al terzo piano, with Ajita Wilson. Italy 1977. 
• Mario Castellacci & Pier Francesco Pingitore (dir). Nerone, with Pippo Franco as Nero and Giò Stajano as his involuntary sex-change wife Sporus. Italy 105 mins 1977.

1978

Fuori! activists were able to meet with the mayors of Turin and Rome, and the directors of the national broadcaster RAI.

Robertina Manganaro had moved to Milan with her divorced father, where she was known as his daughter. She became a model for the avant-garde artist, Enrico Baj. At age 20 she had genital surgery at a private clinic in England.

US actor Ajita Wilson having appeared in various French and Italian porno-films, made a crossover into Euro-trash such as women-in-prison flics.

• Mauro Severino (dir)  Travolto dagli affetti familiari, with Giorgia O’Brien. Italy 100 mins 1978.
• Claudio Giorgi (dir). Candido erotico, with Ajita Wilson as sex-show performer. Italy 94 mins 1978.
• Joe D’Amato (dir). Le notti porno nel mondo nº 2, with Ajita Wilson as stewardess. Italy 88 mins 1978.
• Luigi Batzella & Derek Ford (dir). Proibito erotico, with Ajita Wilson as Julie. Italy 66 mins 1978.
• Erwin C Dietrich (dir). Adolescenza morbosa, with Ajita Wilson. Italy/Switzerland 95 mins 1978.

1979

The first Italian Gay Pride Parade in Pisa with about 500 people, as a protest against homophobic violence.

A small group of trans women organised a protest in Milan, in order to raise public attention to the issue of trans people’s right to be recognised as their preferred gender. They went to a swimming pool wearing only their bikini bottoms as men do not have to wear tops even if they have breasts.

Roberta Franciolini, Marcella Di Folco, Gianna Parenti and Pina Bonanno, founded Movimento Italiano Transessuali (MIT) in Rome in 1979. Working with civil rights activists, but Roberta as the main animatrice, they struggled for Law 164 ‘Norme in materia di rettificazione di attribuzione di sesso’, which was passed in 1982 and provided legal recognition of a person's acquired gender.

• Nello Rossati (dir). Una donna di notte, with Ajita Wilson in the ‘lesbian’ scene. Italy 90 mins 1979.
• Luigi Russo (dir). Pensione Amore - SerVizio completo, with Ajita Wilson as Karina. Italy 85 mins 1979
• Raniero di Giovanbattista (dir). Libidine, with Ajita Wilson as Mary the maid. Italy 87 mins 1979. 
• Ron Wertheim (dir) Eros Perversion, based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, with Ajita Wilson as Antonia. Italy 66 mins 1979.
• Antonio D’Agostino (dir) La cerimonia dei sensi, with Franco Pugi as Messia, and Eva Robin’s as Eva. Italy 90 mins 1979.
• Bruno Corbucci (dir). Squadra antigangster, with Marcello di Falco as man at funeral. Italy/US 90 mins 1979.
• Tinto Brass (dir), Caligula. Scr: Gore Vidal, Malcolm McDowell & Masolino D’Amico, with Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole and Helen Mirren, and Marcello do Falco as orgy master. Italy/US 156 mins 1979. IMDB.

1980

The first nucleus of what later became Arcigay was formed in Palermo on December 9, 1980 as ARCI Gay. It was later renamed Arcigay, and became one of Italy's most prominent LGBT rights organizations.

Marcella Di Folco had completion surgery with Dr Burou in Casablanca. Her film career was now over.  On return Marcella worked as an intercontinental operator for Italcable. She continued as an active participant in Movimento Italiano Transessuali.

Collette Goudie from TAO in Miami visited Rome.

After the murder in Paris of Brazilian travesti Elisa, many rivalries, envy, scandals, and threats surfaced among the immigrant travesti sex workers themselves. At the same time, the pressure from the French authorities grew: between 1980 and 1984, expulsions were multiplied because of irregularities in their visas. Migration of Brazilian travestis to Italy commenced.

• Giuseppe Bertolucci (dir), Oggetti smarriti, with Giorgia O’Brien. Italy 110 mins 1980).
• Edoardo Mulargia (dir) Femmine infernali (Escape from Hell), with Ajita Wilson as Zaira. Italy/Spain 93 mins 1980. Escape from a tropical women’s prison. This film was edited with Hotel Paradise and released in the US as Savage Island,
• Edoardo Mulargia (dir). Orinoco: Prigioniere del sesso (Hotel Paradise), with Ajita Wilson as Muriel. Italy/Spain 101 mins 1980. Slave women in an emerald mine rescued by revolutionaries. This film was edited with Escape from Hell and released in the US as Savage Island,
• Lucio Fulci (dir). Luca il contrabbandiere, with Ajita Wilson as Luisa. Italy 97 mins 1980. Gangster film set in Naples.
• Antonio D’Agostino (dir). Eva man (Due sessi in uno), with Eva Robin’s as Eva and Ajita Wilson as Ajita. Italy 75 mins 1980.
• Jacques Orth (dir). Pensieri morbosi, with Ajita Wilson as prostitute. Italy 76 mins 1980.
• Federico Fellini (dir). La città delle donne, with Marcello Mastroianni, and Marcello di Falco as slave. Italy/France 139 mins 1980. IMDB.

1981

The offence of plagio (under which Aldo Braibanti had been convicted in 1968 for having a man in his 20s as a lover) was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court with decision no. 96 of 8 June 1981.

• Zacarias Urbiola (dir). Pasiones desenfrenadas, with Ajia Wilson as Enrica. Italy/Spain 1981.
• Francesco Massaro (dir). I carabbinieri, with Marcello di Falco as Aroldi. Marcello Di Folca never worked again in movies after her completion surgery. This was her last film.

1982

Roberta Franciolini struggled against police repression and AIDS.

Norme in materia di rettificazione di attribuzione di ssesso [Norms regulating changes in sex attribution]; Legge 164, 1982, Text. A new law (N. 164/82) regulating the legal possibility of changing sex, resulting from the lobbying by Movimento Italiano Transessuali.

Art. 1 states “The sex change, as per article 454 of the civil code, is made possible by a definitive rulingof the judge attributing to a person a sex different from that declared at birth, after the occurred modification of her/his sexual characteristics” (Gazzetta Ufficiale 1982: 1), and Art. 3 specifies: “If competent experts prove that a person needs to undergo medical and surgical treatments in order to modify her/his sexual characteristics, the judge authorizes this intervention with a ruling. After the surgical operation, the judge allows the rectification of her/his personal data in identity documents”.

The law institutionalised the process through which trans people could transform their gender, and identified medical science as the authority that can carry out a legitimate change in the gender status of trans people. This enabled public hospitals to offer psychiatry, hormones and surgery within the Italian national health system for small fees. The Act mentions neither chromosomes nor hormones, and the legal sex change is permitted only after genital surgery. However its does give legal recognition to the medical authorities as the competent agents in managing a sex-change transition process, thus taking for granted and confirming the perceived pathological nature of the trans condition. Although it does not say so, one of the reasons for the Act is to protect doctors from accusations of mutilating physically sane persons.

• Dario Argento (dir). Tenebrae, with Eva Robin’s as girl on beach. Italy 101 mins 1982.
• Zacarias Urbiola (dir). El regreso de Eva Man/El pitoconejo, with John Saxon, and Eva Robin’s as Eva and Ajita Wilson as Ajita. Italy/Spain 88 mins 1982.

1983

Giò Starace transitioned and became Maria Gioacchina Stajano Starace, Contessa Briganti di Panico, although she still used 'Giò' in her public life. Her first interview was with Il Borghese for which he had written as ‘Pantera Rosa’, mainly about Roman aristocracy.

David Tolu was ejected from the women's toilets at age 14, and started using the men's.

Mario Mieli died by suicide, age 30. He had written another book, Il risveglio dei Faraoni (The awakening of the Pharaohs), partly autobiographical, partly religious. He anticipated an adverse reaction. A pirated edition was later published, but his family brought legal action and had all copies destroyed. The book remains the subject of speculation.

The civil rights group, Circolo di cultura omosessuale Mario Mieli, was named in his honour.

• Zacarias Urbiola (dir). La doppia bocca di Erika, with Ajita Wilson as Erika. Italy 71 mins 1983.
• Luigi Cozzi (dir). Hercules, with Lou Ferrigno as Hercules, and Eva Robin’s as Daedalus. Italy/US 98 mins 1983.

1984

Tracy Norman, from New York, had been seeking modelling work in Milan, but there was not much, so she returned to New York.

• Gianni Siragusa (dir). Perverse oltre le sbarre/Hell Behind the Bars/Hölle im Frauengefängnis, with Ajita Wilson as Conchite. Italy 82 mins 1984.
• Gianni Siragusa (dir). Detenute violente/Hell Penitentiary, with Ajita Wilson as Erica Thompson. Italy 90 mins 1984. 

1985

Lucy Salani made trips to Paris and met trans women there. In the 1980s she accompanied two trans friends to London where they had transgender surgery, and later she also had the operation. 

Dominot ran a bar in Rome, Il baronato quattro bellezze, where he performed in drag singing the French chanteuses from Edith Piaf to Juliette Greco.

• Teit Ritzau (dir). Paradiset er ikke til salg (Paradise Is Not for Sale). With Giorgia O’Brien and Christine Jorgensen. Denmark 60 mins 1985.
• Luigi Cozzi (dir). Le avventure dell'incredibile Ercole, with Lou Ferrigno as Hercules, and Eva Robin’s as Dedalos. Italy/US/NL 88 mins 1985.

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Trans actors in movies:  Some seem to think that now, the 2020s, is the golden age of trans women getting acting gigs in films.  However if we count the persons and the films, I think that we will find more of both in the late 1960s and the 1970s. 

The Norme in materia di rettificazione di attribuzione di ssesso of 1982 had been preceeded in Sweden by its Lag om fastställande av könstillhorighet i vissa fall, 1972, and in Germany by Gesetz über die Änderung der Vornamen und die Feststellung der Geschlechtszugehörigkeit in besonderen Fäalen, 1980, both of which provided legal recognition for post-operative trans persons.  All three would be criticised later for imposing sterilisation by not providing for trans persons who did not or were not able to take the surgery path.   However this is a full 20+ years before Britain's Gender Recognition Act, 2004, and there were many of us in Britain in that period who would have benefited from a law like the Italian - not to deny that the British Act was better when it arrived.